


Into the future...

by traptrixnepenthes



Category: Future Card Buddyfight
Genre: M/M, boy how i had died for a chicken macnugget
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-17
Updated: 2019-07-17
Packaged: 2020-06-30 05:39:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19846735
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traptrixnepenthes/pseuds/traptrixnepenthes
Summary: so, this is a rewrite of the first kyotas fic i ever wrote. i would really appreciate it if you didn't try to hunt that down, on account of it being something i wrote in 2014, but. yeah. and yes, it is named after that specific cardset during tasuku's time in disaster, kyoya seeks to better control disaster's most recently acquired tool.





	Into the future...

There was a hobby Kyoya’d had ever since he was a child, although he wasn’t the one who had originally picked it up. His parents had bought him piano lessons when he was very young, and although he’d rebelled against them at first the same way that all small children do whenever they’re being forced into some sort of structured learning, he had bloomed as a pianist very easily.

The concept of playing an instrument was very simple--once you knew the layout of the notes, bringing out what you wanted to hear was the easy part. It had been something he'd enjoyed enough that his parents had bought him a piano for his room, and back when he’d had no particular responsibilities in this world, Kyoya had spent a lot of time on his own putting together small melodies that he liked.

His parents and tutor had died in the Disaster and the resulting fallout, but looking back on it, it wasn’t a tragic event. The loss of a few adults that had so reveled in the corruption of the world wasn’t a big deal at all. Instead, it had been a good thing.

Even after he’d been automatically appointed CEO of his parents’ financial group and had responsibilities an eleven-year-old boy never should’ve had to bear forced onto his shoulders, Kyoya had continued playing the piano in what little spare time he had. What had been so restrictive before was freeing now, and the more he played the piano, the more he realized that the people around him were much like his favorite instrument--once he knew the right words to use, they’d always say exactly what he wanted to hear.

He’d always thought so, having watched how his parents interacted with their peers, but he was sure of it now. The people around him were not people, and he didn’t need to regard them as such. Each and every one of them had done terrible things to where they were now in life; they were rotten and corrupt, and not a single one of them wanted to change. So what did it matter if Kyoya saw them only as a means to an end?

Perhaps that made him no better than the tools he was using, but unlike them he at least had a more grand goal in mind; instead of merely wanting to preserve his position and power, he wanted to create a better world for all, a utopia where the corrupt had no place. And at this point, he didn’t really care what he had to do to get there.

But there was someone among his group who did care, a certain someone he’d expended too much effort to acquire to let him go to waste now. A certain Ryuuenji Tasuku, who was almost too high-maintenance to be a good tool.

Almost.

It was probably just luck that their paths happened to cross that particular night, with Kyoya having needed to finish some things up in another part of the building, and Tasuku simply listlessly pacing the halls after anyone else with any sense would have gone to sleep. Or perhaps it was something more like fate that at that moment, it was just the two of them in the silent world of night.

“What are you doing still awake?”

Tasuku froze and turned to face Kyoya, his long and unkempt cyan hair framing his tired eyes. “...I just couldn’t sleep.”

“It seems there’s been a lot of nights where you couldn’t sleep. I’ve been hearing rumors of a mysterious stringy-haired ghost wandering through the halls.”

Tasuku didn’t meet his eyes, which to be honest, Kyoya had expected. While in his service, Tasuku had made a habit of covering himself from head to toe in heavy plate armor, perhaps because he didn’t want to see others, or maybe simply because he didn’t want to be seen. The shape of that armor was the shape of his heart, and what the heart wanted was to be wrapped up in a protective shell--and he only came out of that shell intentionally if Kyoya was the only one around. It was a fascinating dynamic that they had.

Getting to see Tasuku without the armor, though, just made it obvious how restless and agitated he was, fussing with his hair, his eyes darting back and forth as if he didn’t know where to look. So Kyoya, being a good friend, decided to comment on it. “You’re not looking very well. Do you want to talk to someone?”

“I’m fine.”

“Well, I’ll be here if you want anything.” Kyoya smiled at him. “I’m your friend, after all.”

 _Friend_ was just a word, but to the right person, it meant everything. And to Tasuku--who had so _willingly_ thrown away everything and everyone else in his life away just because Kyoya had asked him to, it was the most precious word of all. He might’ve said he didn’t need friends anymore, but he couldn’t hide the way that single syllable made him feel. “...I guess it wouldn’t hurt. There is something I wanted to talk to you about, actually.”

Kyoya’s smile widened. “Oh? Do tell.”

Tasuku opened his mouth to say something, and then looked around--they were all alone in the dead of night, and still Tasuku was worried about being seen. Or maybe, it was just something he didn’t want anyone but his savior to overhear. “Can we...go somewhere else for this?”

“Sure.” Kyoya started walking, and a moment later, he heard Tasuku’s footsteps following him. Perhaps it was his training that made it so easy for Tasuku to fall into step next to him as if right by Kyoya’s side was only the natural place for him to be. “Let’s go to my room. And if you don’t mind me saying, it seems like you’re...awfully stressed out about something. I can show you one of my favorite ways to relax.”

Tasuku didn’t respond, and Kyoya hadn’t expected him to. His knight wasn’t exactly the most talkative of people.

Kyoya’s room was a depressing sight, probably. He didn’t really care what a room no one else was supposed to see looked like, and how it looked was as if no one actually lived in it. The colors were bland and monochrome, the bed was small and hardly slept in, and while there was a small desk and a bookcase, they looked more like pieces that had been designed for a movie set than an actual home. The only sign of real life was the piano that sat against one wall, and instead of letting Tasuku marvel at how pathetic this space was, Kyoya led his guest to the bench in front of it. He gestured for Tasuku to sit down next to him, and he did, although hesitantly.

“I don’t know how to play the piano,” he said, eyes focused straight on the keys.

“I didn’t expect you to.” Kyoya put his hands on the eyes, and watched as Tasuku’s gaze drifted to them. “But you don’t need to know how to play to play something anyways. When I get too stressed out to think I like to come here and experiment with sounds until I find something nice. Making something new--or maybe just being able to break the silence--tends to calm me down.”

He pressed a single key, then a different one, and while it sounded discordant at first the sounds soon blended their way into something smooth and easy. It was simply an experiment, and one Kyoya would forget about soon enough, but he felt so aware of Tasuku’s eyes on his fingers that he almost wanted to remember it, for being something so impressive to someone like him.

He trailed off, letting the music die, and took his hands off the keys. “Why don’t you try?”

Tasuku hesitated, but lifted his hands to the keyboard, his fingertips hovering over the keys as if he couldn’t bear to touch them for some reason--and then set his hands back in his lap.

“Have you ever…” His voice was weak, softer than the song Kyoya had just played for him. It was not a tone for talking, but for confiding secrets that had never been heard by anyone else. “Have you ever thought that you don’t deserve to be happy?”

Tasuku’s eyes were still on the piano, on the keys he couldn’t touch, but Kyoya’s eyes were on Tasuku. This was not the prodigy fighter that everyone looked up to. This was not the hero that Tasuku had fashioned himself into--this was someone weak, delicate, defenseless. Years of trying to live up to everyone’s expectations of him, forcing himself into being an adult, had just left Tasuku so fragile that for a moment, Kyoya was worried that if he actually responded he’d just shatter into tears.

He couldn’t risk letting Tasuku break. He was still a tool Kyoya could get so many more uses from.

Kyoya could’ve answered the question honestly, but he felt that was a response that just would’ve hurt Tasuku. “In the world I desire,” he said, hoping his sidestep of the question would go unnoticed, “everyone will be happy. You will be, too.”

Tasuku squeezed his hands so hard that Kyoya was worried for a moment that he’d accidentally break one of his fingers. “What if I don’t deserve to be part of that world?”

“Why wouldn’t you?”

Still, Tasuku did not look at him. Other than his trembling hands, he didn’t respond at all for a long moment. “What if I’ve done something so terrible in the past that I...don’t deserve to be forgiven for it? Can you really say that someone like that would belong in a perfect world? I’m no better than the people we’re fighting against.”

“I can’t exactly pretend that I haven’t done bad things too in the name of the world I want to create.” Perhaps this was why Tasuku had been so restless, why his conviction was wavering. The least Kyoya could do was soothe his nerves, and try not to wonder why he couldn’t deny it entirely and say that he himself belonged in the world he wanted to make. “The ends justify the means, or so they say.”

“I killed my parents,” Tasuku blurted out, almost before Kyoya could finish speaking, and Kyoya just tilted his head in curiosity. “Not literally, but… When the Disaster happened, there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I can’t even remember what happened during it, from the trauma or something, but I was the only one who lived. Isn’t that proof enough that I should’ve been able to do something? I was _powerless_ and that meant my family had to die. It’s my fault.”

“Tasuku,” Kyoya said softly, and Tasuku flinched away from his name. “You were...only nine years old. There wasn’t anything you could’ve done to stop the Disaster.” Kyoya wondered, for a moment, if he should’ve felt the same way Tasuku did. As if his parents’ death had been a tragedy, something to change his whole life. Something to feel guilt over. In another world, was there a Kyoya who wanted to change the world in honor of his dead parents, or a Tasuku who had become a hero to spite his family? “It’s never been your fault.”

Tasuku managed to choke out a laugh, a harsh and bitter sound that Kyoya could’ve ignored from anyone else. “I know that in my head, but actually believing it...is more difficult. I couldn’t save them, so I wanted to become someone who could save others. It was just my selfish method of wanting to make myself feel better, and now everyone thinks I’m a hero.”

Kyoya didn’t know how to respond, which was a first for him. He’d always prided himself on knowing exactly what to say and when to say it to get what he needed, but here with Tasuku he didn’t know what he wanted to say, or what Tasuku wanted to hear. If he were the one in Tasuku’s shoes right now, what would he want to hear?

In that moment, Kyoya realized something, perhaps something he should’ve realized long before now. Tasuku, someone who had lost his whole family when the Disaster struck, someone who had thrown away his whole world when he’d been given the option, was not someone who had any hope for the future. If he didn’t think he deserved happiness and only helped other people as a form of penance, then what else was there for him?

It wasn’t like he hadn’t noticed how tightly Tasuku held onto words like “save people” or “save the world”. He hadn’t understood why, but now he did--that was all Tasuku had anymore. His reason for living. Save other people, the way he hadn’t been able to save his family. Save the world, the way he hadn’t been able to save other people. And then, when there was no one else to save, what would he do?

“What do you want to do?”

“Huh?”

The question had slipped out of Kyoya’s lips before he could think about it, and now he needed to come up with something to back it up. “When we’ve achieved our goals and made our happy world, what do you want to do in it? You’ll be a hero, and you’ll have saved everyone from the people who would seek to harm them. You’ll have gotten everything you wanted, so what then?”

“I--”

“Don’t tell me you don’t deserve it.” Finally, Tasuku’s eyes were on his, crimson red and full of emotion. “Regardless of what you deserve, that world is going to happen. What will you do afterwards?”

As Tasuku sat and thought, Kyoya wondered why he was trying so hard here. What was it about Tasuku that had made him willing to expend so much effort for him in the first place? Rotting the Buddy Police from the inside out hadn’t exactly been an easy effort, not when the corrupt adults he’d been using in the first place didn’t even care for anything except the status and prestige of their new positions. Setting up a test for him just to see how ruthless he’d be when it really came down to the wire hadn’t been easy either, and it had relied more on luck than anything else. And why was he sitting here now with Tasuku, someone who should have just been a particularly useful tool, listening to his complaints and trying to console him? All this, and for what?

“...I don’t know,” Tasuku said finally, breaking Kyoya out of his thoughts. He looked at Kyoya again, his eyes full of some kind of expectations, waiting for Kyoya to be the one to save _him_. He’d already done so once before, but that had been purely superficial, just turning a weapon to another target. This was something deeper, more profound, more meaningful, and Kyoya didn’t know what to do, other than continue to act as Tasuku’s savior.

He reached out and gently took one of Tasuku’s hands, a childish gesture of reassurance that he’d half-expected Tasuku to reject--but he didn’t, instead clinging to Kyoya like a lifeline. This was all just to control him, Kyoya told himself, so that he’ll stop wavering and continue forward on the path needed. “Think about that, then. It’ll give you another reason to work towards our goals.”

They sat like that together silently, and Kyoya couldn’t help but notice how cold Tasuku’s hand was. Was he eating enough? “...What about you? What’s the first thing you want to do once we’ve saved the world?”

The question pierced Kyoya’s chest like an arrow, his heart and mind stopping dead. What _did_ he want to do? What plans _did_ he have for the future, beyond finalizing a world where everyone could live in peace and harmony? Why did he want that world in the first place--what future did he want to have? What hope did _he_ have for the future? Isn’t having no hope for the world why he’d resolved to recreate it in the first place?

He’d been the one who had pressed Tasuku so hard for an answer in the first place, but he didn’t even have an answer himself. “I...I don’t know either.”

Tasuku squeezed his hand gently, and that childish gesture that had meant nothing to Kyoya at first, just being something to give Tasuku what he’d wanted, suddenly took on a new form. He looked at Tasuku, at those tired crimson eyes, and Tasuku smiled at him with that sad, sad smile of someone who truly understood. “Let’s think about what we want to do...together.”

Kyoya was supposed to be the one saying the right words, convincing with the right lies, but now it was Tasuku saying words that Kyoya had never known he’d wanted to hear. He’d already used idealistic lies and half-truths to manipulate Tasuku into facing the direction he’d wanted, and he’d assumed it would’ve been easy enough to just keep playing him like that. It wasn’t like he was going to stop, not for the sake of the world they’d resolved to create.

But maybe, just maybe…

Maybe someday those lies he’d told him could become true.


End file.
